Skiing, snowboarding and other gliding-board snow sports are popular throughout the world, and new enthusiasts continue to innovate in the way such sports are practiced. For example, recent innovations in skiing techniques include the performance of difficult tricks while on the skis that reflect tricks that are frequently undertaken in wheeled sports such as inline skating, skateboarding, and the like, and sometimes by snowboarders.
A new alpine skiing sport, sometimes called “newschool skiing” originated in the late 1990s, when freestyle skiers began attempting and performing tricks in what were at the time snowboard-only terrain parks. Newschool skiing is related more to snowboarding in general style than to traditional freestyle skiing.
Many ski resorts have introduced terrain parks for skiers and snowboarders to perform tricks. These parks may include, for example, rails, boxes, jumps, hips, quarterpipes, and halfpipes.
A popular choice of equipment for this terrain is the twin-tip ski, which is turned up at both ends to allow for both regular (forwards) and fakie (backwards) skiing. Three common types of newschool skis are powder, all-mountain, and park. The powder ski is wide and sometimes has a higher tail in order to support switch powder landings. The all-mountain ski is an average width and is equally good on both groomed and powder. The park ski is specially built for “jibbing” (i.e., skiing on anything other than snow such as rails, boxes, barrels, walls, etc.) and jumps. Park skis are often designed with a more symmetrical shape to make fakie skiing much easier and with reinforced edges to withstand rails.
Many of the tricks associated with newschool skiing produce significant stresses and/or abrasions to the skis that are not common in other skiing forms. Conventional ski construction methods are typically directed to more conventional forms of skiing. Newschool skiing can result in damage and even breakage of conventional skis.
Moreover, youths especially are attracted to terrain parks and are continually looking for more challenging and unique features. They also participate in summer action sports that utilize similar structures in skate parks and urban terrain. For this reason much of the man-made park features mimic terrain normally found in the city and in skate parks. Enthusiasts are using skis in urban terrain, often with very little, if any, snow. When performing tricks in these conditions, the skis get damaged more quickly. Typically, warranties do not cover the impact damage caused by such endeavors. For this reason, users often find it more difficult to afford to participate in the sport, due to the high price of buying replacement equipment.
Similarly, snowboarding enthusiasts are famous for pushing the envelope in finding new and innovative methods and practices in their sport. Often such practices are very dynamic and can put unanticipated strains and stresses on the snowboards, potentially resulting in damage to the snowboard equipment.
It would be advantageous, therefore, to produce a gliding board suitable for newschool skiing, snowboarding, and/or similar gliding board sports that is both rugged to withstand the rigors of such uses and is relatively inexpensive to produce.